


Mirror

by rosymamacita



Series: Arcadia [3]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Episode 3.03, Other, Polis, captive Clarke, clarke centric, wanheda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 09:53:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5963005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosymamacita/pseuds/rosymamacita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After her self imposed exile at the end of season 2, Clarke is confronted by her own reflection, and does not know who she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror

The trading post was dark and quiet. That had been the plan. Niylah was off getting her supplies from the back, so when she saw movement in the crowded room, she jumped, and so did the figure across the way. She took out her dagger and stalked whoever it was hiding in there, behind those racks, only to come face to face with herself.

“Mirror,” Clarke said, and her voice came out like a growl. 

Clarke stared into the mirror, into the matted hair, dark red with the berries she rubbed into it every night by the fire. Through trial and error, she’d actually found a kind that repelled mosquitos and smelled astringent rather than sweet, but that was just an accident, and they also matted the hair into a tangle she just preferred to ignore. She looked more like a monster than a human. How fitting.

As she stared into her own eyes, she began to realize that there was a lot that she preferred to ignore.

She hadn’t seen herself in a mirror since before leaving Mount Weather the first time, when she was dressed in bright clothes and her hair was clean and shiny and her skin was clean. Dante had tried to bring her over to his side, seeing her as the good leader of her people, the one who wanted the best for them.

No one had seen the monster in the bright princess they courted before. Dante Wallace had no idea what she was capable of when he gave her that paint set and said they were alike. 

Clarke stared into her blue eyes, bluer now against the dark red of her hair, and had to stop.

Maybe Dante Wallace had known what she was capable of. Maybe he had seen a kindred soul, the kind who would kill another people to save hers, just like him.

Niylah came back through the door then. 

Clarke turned away from herself and stepped up to the woman.

***  
When Lexa imprisoned her, she threw her into a beautiful room, high up in the highest tower of Polis. A large dressing mirror sat next to the bed and Clarke considered shattering it and using the shards for weapons. But she knew she was surrounded by guards, by an entire city of grounders. What purpose would it serve? What purpose did she actually have? Clarke wasn’t even sure if she had a goal.

She turned to the dressing mirror and examined herself. 

She had to admit, she was more recognizable than she was the last time she’d seen herself. Her cheeks were still flushed and her hair still matted and wild from when she had flipped out after seeing Lexa. Clarke grinned. It had felt good to spit at her and scream at her and threaten her life.

The great Wanheda. She chuckled and with the wild look in her eye, the smile in the mirror was scary as hell. She liked it. But then the smile faded.

That was the first time she had let her anger out, the first time she had let herself express her rage. Her heart was beating so fast now, even after the fact. Her heart was beating again. The rage and anger and fury she had let out had started it going again. She slunk down onto the bed, sitting cross legged in the middle of it, staring at herself in the mirror across from her. 

She watched the tears start to fall and pretended that the fury had not also released the pain. 

***

Lexa’s handmaidens had forced Clarke to bathe.

She wasn’t going to take it out on the girls. Frankly, she thought they might be slaves of some sort, she wasn’t sure, and if they weren’t, they were clearly just servants. It reminded her of the way the stations ran on the Ark, with some people at the top, and the others, just meant to serve. 

So she let them scrub her with scented soaps and bristled brushes, but she was stiff and they moved her about like a doll as they tended her. They removed her from the bath and dressed her in grounder clothes and sat her in front of her dressing mirror as they worked on her rat’s nest hair.

She let them comb out her hair, work on it until the mats had transformed into some semblance of style with oils and rings and braids, using the berry dye still left as decoration instead of camouflage. She really didn’t care. None of it was real anyway. It was an act put on, it was a mask put on for Lexa. 

One of the girls jumped back. Clarke was growling.

She cleared her throat and mumbled, “sorry,” and they went back to work. Clarke ignored them.

Now she stared at herself instead, trying to understand. Looking into her own eyes, trying to figure out what was the mask and what was real. 

She could barely remember who she was before coming to earth. She remembered a soft blonde girl with her hair pulled back in a neat braid. She remembered laughing. She remembered hugs from her dad and her mom and Wells. She remembered playing. 

She thought that girl should be her. That was the her before all this had happened.

But she stared into her blue eyes, not soft, not gentle, not innocent and thought, ‘that is not me anymore either.’

The handmaidens finished their work and Clarke could hear them mumble, saying how beautiful and powerful she looked and how proud they were to present Wanheda at her best. But she didn’t move, didn’t look at them, didn’t pay attention to them, didn’t thank them. She just glared at her own reflection. The handmaidens left the room. She heard the door lock after them. 

Clarke continued to stare at her blue eyes. They were not soft, they were not gentle, they were not innocent. They were fierce, they were cunning and they remembered. They burned behind the mask. 

***

The handmaidens had come and gone, again. They did not bother with compliments this time. But they turned her into a terrifying goddess. The Wanheda. Commander of Death. She thought they had seen something of her, those handmaidens. She thought they had seen something Lexa had missed. 

Clarke stared at her reflection again, waiting to be called for the audience with The Heda. 

She looked like The Commander of Death. She looked like the person who could burn 300 hundred warriors alive, or kill every man woman and child in the mountain. She looked like a nightmare. 

But Clarke kept staring at her own eyes, the blue turned icy and pale by the black makeup hiding her face.

Clarke refused to look away. Clarke faced herself and all she had done, all she had hurt, all she had given, all she had abandoned, all she had run from, all she had loved.

The gong rang, calling her to attend.

But there. 

There in her eyes.

Clarke saw herself finally. She found herself. 

Underneath the mask of Wanheda, underneath the Commander of Death, underneath the woman Lexa wanted, underneath the Leader of the Delinquents, underneath the princess, underneath Bellamy’s partner, underneath her parents’ daughter, underneath the doctor, underneath the friend and the student and the girl, underneath Clarke Griffin, she found herself. 

In her eyes she found love.

Clarke straightened and turned as her door was unlocked and opened.

She was love.

She walked through the door and down the hall to the audience.

Clarke Griffin thought no one would ever guess what was coming.

She thought, “You should all be afraid.”


End file.
